Cyberattacks, which consist of exploiting security vulnerabilities of computer networks and systems for any kind of malicious purpose (e.g., extortion, data steal, assets hijacking), have been continuously increasing worldwide in recent years. Cyberspace appears today as a new battlefield, along with physical world scenarios (land, sea, air, and space), for the organizations defence and security. Besides, by the fact that attacks from the physical world may have significant implications in the cyber world and vice versa, these dimensions cannot be understood independently. However, the most common intelligence systems offer an insufficient situational awareness exclusively focused on one of these decision spaces. This article introduces HYBINT, an enhanced intelligence system that provides the necessary decision-making support for an efficient critical infrastructures protection by combining the real-time situation of the physical and cyber domains in a single visualization space. HYBINT is a real cross-platform solution which supplies, through Big Data analytical methods and advanced representation techniques, hybrid intelligence information from significant data of both physical and cyber data sources in order to bring an adequate hybrid situational awareness (HSA) of the cyber-physical environment. The proposal will be validated in a detailed scenario in which HYBINT system will be evaluated.

Starting from a common fictional scenario, simulated data sources and a set of measurements will feed two different visualization techniques with the aim to make a comparative analysis. Both visualization techniques described in this paper use the operational picture concept, deemed as the most appropriate tool for military commanders and their staff to achieve cyber situational awareness and to understand the cyber defence implications in operations. Cyber Common Operational Picture (CyCOP) is a tool developed by Universitat Politècnica de València in collaboration with the Spanish Ministry of Defence whose objective is to generate the Cyber Hybrid Situational Awareness (CyHSA). Royal Military Academy in Belgium developed a 3D Operational Picture able to display mission critical elements intuitively using a priori defined domain-knowledge. A comparative analysis will assist researchers in their way to progress solutions and implementation aspects.

Forest fires are one of the natural disasters that frequently occur around the world, causing irreparable human, material and environmental losses. To confront a wild forest fire, it is essential to have an accurate description of the operations environment, which allows to take decisions in line with reality and collaboration among the different agencies involved in response operations. This paper describes an architecture for implementing of a Command and Control Information System that enables to obtain an accurate situational awareness of the operations theater, communications with the deployed units inside and outside the disaster environment, and coordination and effective transmission of decisions making when responding to the presence of a wild forest fire. It focus its proposal on the establishment of a tactical network that allows adequate monitoring of the environment and facilitate mobility and deployment of response units on the hot spot.

Large Forest Fires are one of the most destructive and recurring natural disaster types around the world, and year after year they leave environmental, material and human irreparable losses in the social nuclei in which they occur. To face them, it is essential to have a Situation Awareness that allows decisions making according to reality, promoting the collaboration between the all involved and execution of effective actions to manage the fire. This paper describes the architecture for the implementation of a Command and Control Information System, which makes it possible to get and share with all stakeholders, the required information to confirm an accurate and timely Situation Awareness of disaster scene. It is based on the establishment of a flexible, resilient and scalable Wireless Mesh Network, which supporting communications both inside and outside the area affected by the fire, and allows the surveillance of environment state and the response units deployed within the same.

Internet of Things (IoT), more than smart homes and connected appliances, is to reach physical knowledge in real-time and remotely; and taking advantage of the smartphone’s increasing diffusion, it is possible using its embedded sensors to monitor the environment, anytime and anywhere; this could be the solution to many community problems as well as natural hazards. This paper focuses on the solution to one of the most deadly natural hazards, earthquakes; taking seismic data of Ecuador, a country with an average of 6 earthquakes per day in 2013. Technologies of IoT like Sensor Web Enablement Framework (SWE) and Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT) give the benefit of achieving an Early Warning System capable of anticipating up to 12 seconds the maximum seismic peak in the epicentre zone through smartphones. The system is supported by a wireless sensor network and its main components, requirements and design decisions are described. It considers time and spatial analyses, not present in any other work, making it more precise and customizable, and adapting it to the features of the geographical zone and resources. A preliminary evaluation of the solution was conducted to determine its strengths and weaknesses in terms of response time. The obtained results indicate that the energy consumption is as relevant for end-users as their personal security.

This paper presents a different and innovative proposal to detect seismic events, a solution that uses smartphones as opportunistic sensor nodes to obtain real-time knowledge of the community environment through a hierarchical architecture, taking advantage of this growing trend. A distributed low-cost network formed of smartphones capable of detect a seismic-peak with a high accuracy by means of converting accelerometers in accelerographs optimizing distributed calculations in these. A server which considers time and spatial analyses not present in another works, making it more precise and customizable, coupling it to the features of the geographical zone, network and resources. Validated by extensive evaluation, the most relevant results have been the improvement in notifications delivery about a seismic-peak 12 seconds earlier in the epicenter zone, the reduced consumption of mobile battery and the reduction in the number of false positives. In addition, this challenge becomes an great opportunity giving people as much as tens of seconds warning before an earthquake occurs in places far from the epicenter.

Earthquake early warning systems are of high interest due to their consequences and life losses they may cause. Sensor Web Enablement SWE and their related standards allow interoperability of sensors from different vendors and detect earthquakes in advance. For the proposed system we propose the use of the Sensor Observation Service and smartphones as gateways to transmit information from their embedded sensors like the accelerometer. The paper includes an architecture to integrate and process this information, with the possibility of incorporate other sensors out of the smartphones, like seismographs and the generated date in the SOS harmonization platform. The system has been tested in an emulated environment in order to train it and eliminate false positives, improving early warning existing systems of this nature.

Detecting disruptive events using Commercial off-the-self (COTS) sensors like the ones embedded in smartphones is a difficult challenge but also an interesting opportunity. In this paper, we present a reliable and scalable hierarchical architecture of smartphones acting as opportunistic sensor nodes. Using a low energy-consumption application, we have used the smartphones inertial sensor as an accelerograph. The deployed smartphones and the application form a low-cost wireless sensor network, that detects, analyzes and notifies a seismic-peak. The systems optimizes the distributed calculations in the smartphones; communication capabilities and integration in order to provide extra time for early warning in disaster scenarios (e.g. earthquakes), although the architecture may be extended to other disruptive and rare events. We propose an innovative real-time solution which considers time and spatial analyzes, not present in another works, making it more precise and customizable, coupling it to the features of the geographical zone, network and resources, so as providing evidence of the feasibility of earthquake early warning using a dense network of cell phones. The architecture has been validated by extensive evaluation and the most relevant result has been the improvement in notifications delivery about a seismic-peak 12 seconds earlier than previous works in the epicenter zone, and a reduction in the number of false positives. Additionally the proposed architecture includes a post-event management to help users and strengthen coordination between aid-agencies in order to optimize human resources and time to implement measures in order to eliminate negative effects on the population.

Research on modeling and simulation of tactical data link systems, especially on Link 16, has become a significant area in recent years. This is due to NATO has decided to install Link 16 tactical systems on all of their military platforms used to defense and rescue actions. Link 16 is currently the most modern standard for secure data transmission over military networks. This paper presents a layered model for Link 16 simulation. It was developed and evaluated on NS-2.34 simulator. In addition we propose different simulations and scenarios to evaluate our Link 16 model and finally the results of this studio are presented.

Friendly Force Tracking Systems (FFTS) are the lowest echelon command and control information systems (C2IS) in any army command and control architecture. Their initial goal is to provide near real-time information about own troops position. However, in foreseeable current empty battlefields as well as in asymmetric confrontations at least two extra functionalities are required: 1) sensor integration capabilities and 2) extra features allowing traditional C2 functions over small units with high mobility, possibly from battalion level downwards dismounted soldier. SIMACOP, developed by Technical University of Valencia, provides upon a FFT system basic C2 functionalities previously stated: threat, alarm and ORBAT management; overlaying and tactical chat messaging as well as sensor integration, with special focus on video. System has been successfully evaluated by Spanish Army and has been used as a basic tool for manoeuvres carried by Spanish Army 8 Light Cavalry Regiment and the Signal Brigade. In this work the fielded experience of the system at such realistic scenarios is shown demonstrating its C2 capabilities far beyond from being a simple FFT system. Precisely, 'sensor-on-network' concept has been demonstrated by means of video-server integration, implementing the "Post and smart pull" communication paradigm. Gaining access to video information from any sensor at any C2 post, bears to a sensible enhancement in agility and mission effectiveness.

Urban traffic control systems have based their technological infrastructure on both advanced analogical close-circuit television systems (TVCC) and point-to-point links, providing low-scalable and very expensive systems. The main goal of an urban traffic monitoring system is to capture, send, play and distribute video information from the streets of a certain city. Current digitalization process of video networks, and the research carried out in the field of streaming media, has led vendors to present proprietary hardware and software solutions resulting in a strong dependency among their customers. The existence of open standards for video encoding and protocols for streaming media transmission over IP networks has led us to propose this system. The work presents an open urban traffic control system which bases its design on COTS philosophy for hardware and software, as well as open source and standardized protocols. The proposed system is a suitable solution in terms of scalability, cost, interoperability and performance for traffic control systems. Furthermore, its architecture can be easily adapted to other video applications and tools